Recently Bob Graham, chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism and former Florida Senator, has decided to publicly announce how vulnerable he believes the US is to responding to any major terrorist attacks. Mr. Graham’s Commission gave the Obama administration an “F” in the area of responding to a bio-terror attack. In an interview on NPR Mr. Graham’s co-chair former senator Jim Talent, when speaking about the terrorists, went as far as to say that “Eventually, they're going to defeat the intel apparatus”. That is a pretty scary statement when its coming from someone whose job it is to determine our safety and security. That statement also begs the question, is someone who has seemingly already admitted defeat the right man for the job? I want someone who has some optimism and isn’t convinced our intel is bound to fail, believing our intelligence is going to fail isn’t a winning strategy and sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah we might get attacked if Sen. Talent is one of the individuals in charge of preventing it.
This whole ordeal makes you wonder if this information being broadcast all over the media is a good idea? Maybe we could send this embarrassing report card to the head of al-Qaida, or any other organization who may want to attack us? I feel like we’re saying “Hey Mr. Terrorist, if you were thinking about attacking us, nows the time”. I don’t think we should be telegraphing how weak we are around the world. It seems like this information should be discussed with the president and security experts privately so they could do something about it, not broadcast over all the major news networks letting the whole world know that we wouldn’t be able to respond to an attack.
NPR Interview
CNN:US gets "F" on bioterror response
Max Kruse
POS2001/075366
Tu 7:00-9:45
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I must agree with you Max on all points, the desire to bring everything to the media and our desire to have it in this case is very alarming. At a time when America is fighting two wars, maintaining presence in other counties and reaching out to Haiti (I know some people in the National Guard that has been called to duty), this isn’t the time nor was it the appropriate forum for a report of essentially doom and gloom. Along with this grading of our safety and securities that aren’t in place, did Mr. Graham or Mr. Talent offer a report on repairing the weak areas? Once a problem is pointed out, shouldn’t that person or persons have thoughts of possible solutions?
Stacey M. Francois
POS2001/075366
Yeah I have to agree. How can we have faith in our country when they kind of just throw their hands up and say, "well, I just don't think it can be done." That ought to be something that is kept "top-secret". They do know how to do that when it comes time for cover ups, why can't they keep their mouth shut about this and try to fix it?
Ashley Carey
POS 2001
Tuesday 7 pm
Post a Comment